REFLECTION by Nick Brodie

Dean of Academic Studies,  Jane Franklin Hall, Hobart

‘They were testing him.’ This sentence is key to understanding this Gospel passage. The Pharisees, having firm ideas about what the rules were, deliberately put a tricky question to Jesus.

Unfazed, Jesus questions his questioners: ‘What did Moses command you?’ After they give a legalistic reply, which he probably expected, Jesus speaks not of commands but of creation. As Pope Francis says, ‘Jesus firstly, with the wisdom and authority that come to him from the Father, puts the Mosaic prescription into perspective.’ Rules should always serve a higher purpose.

Crucial to Jesus’ teaching on marriage is its mutual nature, where lives are joined. It has purpose and meaning. As the Pope puts it, ‘the man and woman are called to recognise each other, to complement each other, to help each other.’

Jesus was evidently keen to encourage people to focus on the sacred attributes of marriage more than the issue of divorce itself. Interestingly, he did not even use the word translated for us as ‘divorce’ until later pressed to do so by the apostles. Even then, he used it in the sense of something done by one party to another. Recognising this, Pope Francis suggests that the Church should always strive ‘to make her maternal closeness tangibly felt by those who experience relationships that are broken or that continue in a difficult and trying way.’